


Rewrite

by Leyenn



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Community: licenseartistic, F/M, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 21:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about." - Dale Carnegie</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rewrite

**Author's Note:**

> Post-episode for _Post-Modern Prometheus_.

_put on my blue suede shoes and I boarded the plane_

It was Mulder who demanded the rewrite.

_touched down in the land of the Delta Blues in the middle of the pouring rain_

She has no idea how they managed to find a bar with a Cher impersonator, or how an entire town became overnight pop music fanatics, or for that matter how she ended up sitting in this car, driving a confessed criminal to a concert and not to jail. This is not covered in the FBI rulebook. As it turns out, there are a lot of things which aren't covered in the FBI rulebook, the very least of which is this, and so she lets it go.

_W.C. Handy won't you look down over me_

Mulder taps his fingers against the steering wheel as she listens to the silence outside go rushing past. In the back seat, a young man in his mid-twenties with two faces taps his foot in time against the floor of their rental car, and she imagines all the things that could have been different.

_yeah, I got a first class ticket but I'm as blue as a girl can be_

Before the cancer, she was sure of what she wanted, sure of who she was, sure of the world and her place in it. Before a man named Betts and the back of an ambulance, there was reason, fact, certainty, a solid and unquestionable purpose to life.

_then I'm walking in Memphis_

Since the cancer she's found herself taking wine and cheese to Mulder's motel room, and singing 'Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog' in the middle of the wild Florida night, and leaving out peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for a monster that seems only to have a hideous taste in music and women. She no longer really knows, although she struggles with admitting it, what her place is in the world.

_I was walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale_

Mulder looks at her; she looks at him, and looks behind her, and feels the beginning of a smile. Maybe that's all right, tonight. Maybe tonight certainty gets a night off.

_walking in Memphis, but do I really feel the way I feel_

They drive up to the bar, which is a little battered on the outside and a little crowded on the inside, not least with the convoy of lunatics that follow them inside. She thinks about all those things, all those things that could have been different that continue to haunt her, that won't stop haunting her, even now.

_saw the ghost of Elvis on Union Avenue_

She said so many things to him during the cancer - things she can't take back however much she longs to in the middle of other nights than this. So many things to so many people, but Mulder especially. So many things she said or didn't say, so much... some days she wishes she'd given him the diary, at what should have been, would have been, what they both thought and think of as the end.

_followed him up to the gates of Graceland and I watched him walk right through_

She ends up sitting opposite her partner at a slightly sticky table no different to slightly sticky bar tables the world over. The music starts to play, enhanced by the slightly out of rhythm clapping from just behind her head.

_now security they did not see him, they just hovered round his tomb_

The rest of the smile finds her when Mulder high-fives with their supposed prisoner and pushes him up from the table to dance. She stops thinking about the other things, because -

_there's a pretty little thing waiting for the King_

\- in the corner of her eye is beauty and the beast on stage, but that's nothing compared to the hand in her field of view - Mulder's hand, and his head is bowed with the weight of his almost-smile. She looks at him - stares at him, although only for a moment, before she realises there is only one thing for her to do in a moment like this.

_down in the Jungle Room_

Out of the chair and pressed against the crispness of Mulder's shirt, swaying into the familiar scent of him and the unfamiliar heat and muscles that haven't been held this close since a hospital hallway, when she recalls being so small and lost. Well, this, this is definitely different.

_I was walking in Memphis, walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale_

She has a chip in her neck. Even if she no longer has cancer invading her body, she isn't sure it will ever stop eating at her soul. She's never really liked this song or the singer, real or otherwise, and the bar is smoky and filled with suburban white noise, the air a little too hot and a little too dry despite the alcohol flowing in all directions.

_walking in Memphis_

Mulder spins her round, and she ducks under his arm - there's no awkwardness, despite this being the kind of situation she'd barely even have imagined before. His arm rises, she ducks and twirls and for a moment feels elegant and easy, even in her business suit and slow dancing at a Cher concert...

_but do I really feel the way I feel_

Definitely different, definitely new, definitely not like it was between them before. A moment without needing a reason or a purpose other than her own existence in it, and in it she can almost glimpse a future.

Slow dancing with Mulder in the front row of a bad Cher concert, she thinks, and against all natural rules of understanding, this seems to be what _happy_ means these days.

  


*

  



End file.
